Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

cyberscoop.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

landemva wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I interviewed with the USDS team that was embedded in IRS circa 2015-2016 to solve identity pre-ID.me, thoughts and opinions are my own. I have tried to get info out of IRS on the topic using FOIA requests, but they have not been forthcoming. I think there is heartburn over the whole ID.me situation (which they rushed into due to return fraud that occurred due to lacking knowledge based proofing systems,…

I would be interested in reading the FOIA responses. Maybe you can redact your mail address and post on some doc share site. Crowd-sourced open government helps others, also.

I will try to find a way to publish them without connecting them to this handle. I think, like ChatGPT, I’m simply not crafting the correct prompt to obtain the artifacts I’m seeking.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/sep/06/foia-faq-...

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#12

Post by woodruffw »

exabrial wrote: post #3

how about everyone gets a pgp key to establish a long term online identity... kinda like keybase sought to do. Not so great for sending secret messages, but really great for an identity toehold.

Most people struggle not to lose their credit cards (which can be disabled and replaced without significant pain), much less long-term key material. I shudder at the thought of civil servants needing to understand key revocation.

(That's even before quibbling over whether PGP would be the right choice for civil cryptographic identities, which it probably isn't.)

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#15

Post by nyc_data_geek1 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
landemva wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested in reading the FOIA responses. Maybe you can redact your mail address and post on some doc share site. Crowd-sourced open government helps others, also.

I will try to find a way to publish them without connecting them to this handle. I think, like ChatGPT, I’m simply not crafting the correct prompt to obtain the artifacts I’m seeking. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/sep/06/foia-faq-...

Perhaps you could ask ChatGPT to craft the ideal FOIA request to obtain the datum you seek.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#16

Post by kalleboo »

woodruffw wrote: post #12
exabrial wrote: post #3

how about everyone gets a pgp key to establish a long term online identity... kinda like keybase sought to do. Not so great for sending secret messages, but really great for an identity toehold.

Most people struggle not to lose their credit cards (which can be disabled and replaced without significant pain), much less long-term key material. I shudder at the thought of civil servants needing to understand key revocation. (That's even before quibbling over whether PGP would be the right choice for civil cryptographic identities, which it probably isn't.)

In some countries you get your private key embedded in the smart chip in your government ID card (accessible by NFC from any recent smartphone or a $10 USB reader), which you'll want to replace anyway if you lose it.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#17

Post by simonw »

joenathanone wrote: post #2

Those seems like it should be an easy problem to solve, creating a login system isn't exactly rocket science.

Creating a login system for government is one of the hardest problems in service design.

The UK digital government team have written about this at length, eg https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2021/10/19/single-sign-on-what-we-le...

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#18

Post by DesiLurker »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #6
exabrial wrote: post #3

how about everyone gets a pgp key to establish a long term online identity... kinda like keybase sought to do. Not so great for sending secret messages, but really great for an identity toehold.

The USPS would be a great fit for this. Thru have delivery and address / identity verification infrastructure and lots of local physical presence. They could issue tokens and act as the root CA for the PKI.

and also maybe a 1GB email mailbox for a small fee. that might serve as a good alternative to the ad supported webmail prevailing today.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#19

Post by idontwantthis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
joenathanone wrote: post #2

Those seems like it should be an easy problem to solve, creating a login system isn't exactly rocket science.

Disclaimer: I interviewed with the USDS team that was embedded in IRS circa 2015-2016 to solve identity pre-ID.me, thoughts and opinions are my own. I have tried to get info out of IRS on the topic using FOIA requests, but they have not been forthcoming. I think there is heartburn over the whole ID.me situation (which they rushed into due to return fraud that occurred due to lacking knowledge based proofing systems,…

I would need to be convinced Id.me is not wholesale fraud. If it can’t look at a passport picture and look at me, (which is the entire thing it’s supposed to do) then there is just nothing there. I think it’s Theranos level. Maybe sometimes they farm out the facial recognition to another company, maybe sometimes they just make it up, but usually just go to a real person who does the check manually.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#20

Post by photochemsyn »

Yes, there's a solution, it's called one's social security number.

If people are fraudulently abusing the social security number system, stealing other people's numbers and so on, then they should be prosecuted for fraud.

Implementing a Chinese-style facial recognition and social credit score program in order to keep tabs on everyone is just another authoritarian fantasy project, and government incompetence during the pandemic is no excuse for creating such a dystopian system.

One party wants to empower the Gestapo and the other party wants to empower the STASI. What could go wrong?

Post reply on HN